Why Stupidity Wins

We now have most of the world’s information right at our fingertips. But, as Adam Gopnik notes, we’re not necessarily getting smarter:

In a practical, immediate way, one sees the limits of the so-called “extended mind” clearly in the mob-made Wikipedia, the perfect product of that new vast, supersized cognition: when there’s easy agreement, it’s fine, and when there’s widespread disagreement on values or facts, as with, say, the origins of capitalism, it’s fine, too; you get both sides. The trouble comes when one side is right and the other side is wrong and doesn’t know it. The Shakespeare authorship page and the Shroud of Turin page are scenes of constant conflict and are packed with unreliable information. Creationists crowd cyberspace every bit as effectively as evolutionists, and extend their minds just as fully. Our trouble is not the over-all absence of smartness but the intractable power of pure stupidity, and no machine, or mind, seems extended enough to cure that.

It’s probably the single most frustrating thing about blogging: Even long-settled facts are still subject to “debate,” and it’s now easier than ever to link to “authoritative” accounts “proving” things that are wildly wrong.

Comments

It depends on whose definition of “long-settled facts” you use. In a recent discussion brought on by Don Rumsfeld’s new book, an acquaintance (of the liberal persuasion) seemed to think that the aluminum tubes purchased by Iraq prior to the war were determined to be for use as rocket bodies for MLRS rounds. He mistakenly thought it was a “long-settled fact”.

Without continued debate on subjects liberal mythology places in the “settled fact” category, people would blindly believe lunacy such as vaccinations causing autism and AGW. Closing discussion on any topic is rarely a good thing.

Assuming you have neither the capacity nor expertise to go into the technical aspects of the aluminum tubes, let’s just concentrate of the general concepts in play. This is a good example of how information, disconnected from reason and logic, produces “established facts” that the uniformed take to heart.

In order for you to believe that Iraq was going to use the last iteration of the tubes for production of rocket motors, you would need to believe:

• High Iraqi officials placed a great value on 81mm ammunition for a field artillery system even though the Army wanted 107mm and 122mm equipment.
• These same Iraqi officials thought that it was better to produce these rockets internally as opposed to purchasing the complete, armed, ready-to-use munitions from a number of existing suppliers.
• Although the complete, armed, ready-to-use rockets available to Iraq were fully allowable as defensive, conventional weapons under all the UN sanctions, Iraqi officials decided it was better to clandestinely import motor body tubes of a size and material clearly forbidden– at the very time Iraq was bribing international officials to have sanctions eased.
• Iraqi engineers and program directors didn’t realize the implications of cost and difficulty associated with the modifications of dimension on inside diameters of the tubes.
• The increase in cost from the original $9.40/tube to the final $114.80 (as reported by Larry Wilkerson the evening prior to Colin Powell’s UN presentation) was reasonable to spend on a rocket motor casing.
On top of accepting everything listed above, you would also need to believe that it was total coincidence that:

• Iraqi officials decided they needed to produce magnetic bearings internally.
• The same officials decided to add high-precision balancing equipment to their inventory, even though it was forbidden by the sanctions.
If everything above is something you find perfectly reasonable, you can relax in a world of “settled facts and science”. If something on that list strikes you as being a little too odd or unreasonable to be true, you need to keep asking questions.

I’ll try to type slower next time so you have a chance of understanding the point.

The information I listed is contained in the Duelfer Report. What you are missing is the ability to read the words then make an independent assessment of the facts and come to a conclusion if they make sense.

Tying everything back to Joyner’s article, the point is that what some people blindly accept as fact should be questioned.

Having facts and making use of them are two very different things. People knew that apples fell to the ground… that didn’t bring any formal theory of gravity for thousands of years. Intelligence and recall of facts do not equate to each other. People educated in how to interpret facts and draw inferences, patterns, questions and construct ideas are going to be able to use the internet better then just looking up information randomly.